There are two kinds of titles that you should be thinking about: Your web page title and your Headline Title.  They can be separate or one in the same, depending on what kind of website/blog you have.  Both can put you at the top of a search engine list if done right.  

Website and Web Page Titles
Your website title is one of the first things that major search engines look for when ranking your page. When your title and description accurately reflect your content, (which should also be fabulous,) it drastically improves the chances that your web page rank will rise like fresh baked blueberry muffins. That’s not enough though. You’ll also need a website title that’s noticeable and makes people want to know more and click through to your site.

Think local. If your business is in London, make a specific appeal to London and the surrounding area. People all over the world will still want to view your website for its valuable information. However, it makes good business sense to make a local appeal too since people are more comfortable making purchases from companies that are close by.

List your business name and some important keywords in your title. Small and New businesses list keywords first. Larger and well known businesses can list their name before the keywords. i.e.: A small business may write: Best gourmet coffee in Maine at Schmoe’s Joe. While a larger company may say: Schmoe’s Joe: Best gourmet coffee in Maine.

For every page on your website, use a different tagline with keywords that you know people will look for. i.e.: Schmoe’s Joe: About Our Gourmet Coffee Company, Schmoe’s Joe: Buy Gourmet Coffee Online, Schmoe’s Joe: Gourmet Coffee Accessories.

Website titles should be as short as possible. Don’t try to squeeze ten keywords in to one headline. You are more likely to get better results with one or two quality keywords than you will with half a dozen of them. This is mostly due to the fact that web surfers are looking for instant information. They don’t typically read that much into a headline anyway. In order to get lots of quality keywords associated with your site, use the method above and put a different keyword in the title of every page.

Content, Blog and Article Headlines
According to John Caples, author of “Tested Advertising Methods,” There are three major types of titles that attract the most clicks:

1) News Headlines:
It is human nature to seek out information and find out what is happening in their world. News headlines offer objective facts which make readers feel more knowledgeable and in control of their environment. Examples are: “Celebrity Searches Lead to Malware” “New Remote Application Available for iPhone and iPod” and “Buy New Wii at Discount Stores”

2) Curious Monkey:
Everyone has a little curious monkey inside their head distracting them from the task at hand and telling them to click on the video of the skateboarding dog. Headlines like “Cat Declared Hero” “$80M Disaster” or “Bubble Boy Lives!” can get people’s attention pretty quickly.

3) Self Interests:
This is the most effective since readers are interested in things and ideas that they will personally benefit from. It appeals to a need, a want or an ego. For instance: “Learn Spanish in Two Weeks” “Retire Ten Years Early” or “Affordable Mansions”

When appealing to the “self-interest” spectrum, beware of overuse. Consumers and web surfers have become fairly desensitized to marketing and advertising on the internet, if not extremely wary and cynical. Over-sell it and they may think you’re a scam operation. There needs to exist a delicate balance between a quality product and an intelligent, subtle yet strong appeal to their ego and desire. It all comes down to finding what kind of tone your demographic responds to. Do they want something edgy and fresh, subtle and intelligent, or maybe they are more likely to click on a headline that is funny and bizzare

Remember, you don’t have to be #1 on the search engine’s list to get the most clicks.  It’s better to have a few high quality keywords and an appealing headline than a title that is too vague or contains too much information.

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Day-Parting, or the act of targeting your internet advertising (like banners, ads and pay-per-clicks) to audiences at certain times of the day, can be difficult to set up and evaluate efficiently. Conversion values can range from 5% to 25% or more for a single retail company according to George Michie of the Rimm-Kaufman Group. Being able to measure and act on the daily, or even hourly differences in data is essential and requires careful analysis and execution. Luckily, I’m about to give you some tips to help you and your small business get day-parting done right.

Quality, Not Quantity
Just because you get more clicks at a certain time of day or week, doesn’t mean your conversion rates (sales per click ratio,) are going to go up too. Besides, you have a budget to think about. You may get 100 clicks a minute between 9:00 a.m. and Noon, but can you afford it? Finding times where

Analyze Your Non-Brand PPC Traffic
Making sure that you are analyzing the right kind of traffic is essential. Brand, Direct load and non-brand (competitive) pay-per-clicks behave very differently. You should be isolating your competitive pay-per-clicks and analyzing them separately. Your job should focus mostly on analyzing the PPC that your software program controls – basically your direct and brand PPC. Also, avoid the common mistake of discounting time zones when looking at what day or time a click came in.

Give Credit Where it’s Due
When tracking click to sales conversion rates, keep in mind that most companies don’t reap the benefits of a banner ad right away. People often surf around the web at one time of day, then make their purchases later on, or the next day. This means that you can’t make a correlation between how many clicks you receive in an hour and how many sales were completed at the same time. Use your cookie tracking tools to give you an idea of when people are looking at your ads versus when they actually make a purchase.

Another thing to keep in mind: People may do much of their web surfing at night while they are home, then return to your website from their work computer the next day to make their purchases. There also may be a time of day when people click on your ads, yet choose to call the 800 number to order instead of make their purchase online. This can make tracking difficult, but it’s worth taking into consideration when looking at clicks and sales in a given time period. One way to offset this phenomenon is to slowly beef up your day-parting one segment at a time and keep an eye out for any unexpected results.

Stay Current, Reasonable and Balanced
You should be using data that isn’t too old, but you also want enough time to gather a sufficient sample. Six to Twelve weeks worth of data is probably perfect depending on your business type. Be sure to exclude things like holidays and special sale events since those numbers can throw off your regular data. Also, be sure that every time-bucket has at least 100 click-to-sale conversions. Any less is too small of a sample to read.

Consolidate and Segregate
Instead of analyzing every bucket independently or a full 12 weeks at once, you can consolidate a day, part of a day, or week. For instance, you can group all the hourly buckets in a day into four groups of eight buckets. This would also help to consolidate sparse data from those hours of the day or night when you don’t get as many conversions.

Day-parting is not always a priority for SEO/M managers, and it shouldn’t be. But the steps above can certainly help you make better decisions regarding where you advertise on the web, what data to collect and discard, and how you should spend your time analyzing that data.

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